Bryan Carmody, a freelance reporter in San Francisco, awoke Friday to the sounds of someone trying to break into his house.
About 10 officers from the San Francisco Police Department were bashing the front gate of his home in the Outer Richmond neighborhood with a sledgehammer, he said. It was just after 8 o’clock in the morning.

What do you do with 11,000 blogs on a platform that is over a decade old? That is the question that the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT) and the UMW Libraries are trying to answer. This essay outlines the challenges of maintaining a large WordPress multisite installation and offers potential solutions for preserving institutional digital history. Using a combination of data mining, personal outreach, and available web archiving tools, we show the importance of a systematic, collaborative approach to the challenges we didn’t expect to face in 2007 when UMW Blogs launched. Complicating matters is the increased awareness of digital privacy and the importance of maintaining ownership and control over one’s data online; the collaborative nature of a multisite and the life cycle of a student or even faculty member within an institution blurs the lines of who owns or controls the data found on one of these sites. The answers may seem obvious, but as each test case emerges, the situation becomes more and more complex. As an increasing number of institutions are dealing with legacy digital platforms that are housing intellectual property and scholarship, we believe that this essay will outline one potential path forward for the long-term sustainability and preservation.

Some interesting things to consider for a DoOO project in terms of longevity and archiving.

Mr. Pei, a committed modernist, was one of the few architects equally attractive to real estate developers, corporate chieftains and art museum boards.

I had the privilege of working in an I.M. Pei office building for about two years. It wasn’t a museum, but had so much modern art on its walls and Roy Lichtenstein’s massive “Bauhaus Stairway” in the lobby that it seemed like a museum.

I’ve been saying for awhile now in discussions of the commons, OER, and higher education that a “commons doesn’t scale, it scopes”. Before I explain why I think a commons doesn’t scale very well, I probably need to briefly clarify what’s meant by scale and scope. Like many terms in economics, they’re both commonly used terms in both business and everyday life, but in economics they may carry a subtly different, more precise, or richer meaning. Both terms refer to the production of an increasing volume of output of some kind. Enthusiasts of particular good(s), be they an entrepreneur producing the a product they hope will make them rich or an open educator advocating for more open licensed textbooks because it will improve education, generally want to see their ideas scale. And by scale, they generally mean “be produced in larger and larger volumes”. Larger volume of output, of course, brings a larger volume of benefits to more users. More output –> more users –> more benefits. But it’s the behavior of costs that really intrigues us when we think of “scaling” as a way to increase output. More benefits is nice, but if more benefits also means an equal increase in costs, then it’s not so attractive.

I can see a relation to the economies of scope that Jim Luke is talking about here in relation to the IndieWeb principle of plurality. For a long time the IndieWeb community has put economies of scope first and foremost over that of scale. Scale may not necessarily solve some of the problems we’re all looking at. In fact, scale may be directly responsible for many of the problems that social has caused in our lives and society.

Crowther offered everyone who shared at least a certain volume of data with his forest initiative the chance to be a co-author of a study that he and a colleague led. Published in Science in 2016, the paper used more than 770,000 data points from 44 countries to determine that forests with more tree species are more productive.

I suspect a similar hypothesis holds for shared specs, code, and the broader idea of plurality within the IndieWeb. More interoperable systems makes the IndieWeb more productive.

Boris is asking a problematic question not remembering early issues with the Model T, which Jim Luke reminds us of in his article:

Remember Henry Ford’s famous quote about “the customer can get [the Model T] in any color they want as long as it’s black”?

We’ve already got the Model Ts of social media–it’s called Facebook. It’s Twitter. It’s Instagram. And they’re all standardized–black– but they all require their own custom (toxic and limited) roads to be able to drive them! I can’t drive my Model Twitter in Facebookville. My Instagramobile has long since broken down in Twittertown. Wouldn’t you rather “See The U.S.A. In Your [IndieWeb] Chevrolet“?!

The answer to Boris is that the IndieWeb has been working on the scope problem first knowing that once the interoperable kinks between systems can be worked out to a reasonable level that scale will be the easy part of the problem. Obviously micro.blog has been able to productize IndieWeb principles (with several thousands of users) and still work relatively flawlessly with a huge number of other platforms. There have been tremendous strides towards shoehorning IndieWeb principles into major CMSes like WordPress (~500+ active users currently) and Drupal (~50+ active users) not to mention several dozens of others including Known, Perch, Craft CMS, Hugo, Kirby, etc., etc.

I haven’t heard aggregate numbers recently, but I would guess that the current active IndieWeb user base is somewhere north of 10,000 people and individual websites. Once the UI/UX issues have all been ironed out even a single platform like WordPress, which could easily add the individual pieces into its core product in just a few hours, would create a sea-change overnight by making more than 30% of the web which runs on it IndieWeb friendly or IndieWeb compatible.

Yes, friends, scale is the easy part. Plurality and scope are the the far more difficult problems. Just ask Zuck or Jack. Or their users products.

Where do I start? I mean, I run this event for nearly ten years now. Every time you think ”That’s it. It can’t get any better” and then you end the show and read, listen to and see all this wonderful and nice feedback. Wow, just incredible and fills me with a very warm and lovely feeling. Surely I am feeling exhausted. Empty. Tired. But the positive energy predominates. Energy that comes from people saying that they met many new friends, had exciting conversations and that my little event might have changed their life, or, at least, how they look at their day to day jobs and how they work. When I started beyond tellerrand, I never would have thought, that my event would have an impact for anyone. Honestly. I wanted to create a friendly and inspiring event, where people would feel welcome and spend two days with nice people. Two days, where they maybe could escape the daily routines and hectic. Two days, where phones and/or laptops mostly stay in their pockets and bags. Well, and now? I honestly feel like in a dream somehow. Thank you so, so much! With this wrap-up post, I want to give anyone who has been at the event a chance to look at everything that happened again as well as having a source for those who could not be there to watch all the videos, see blog posts by other people from the event and have a look at the many photos that had been taken. As usual I am going to update this blog post with new material as long as I find it or as long as people send stuff to me. If you have or find anything related to this event, that is not listed already, please let me know. Thanks. Kicking off the 2019 edition of beyond tellerrand. Photo: Juliane Schütz. Stats and Facts What I have recognised this year is, that many more people started using Instagram to document and talk about the event. Even though 2389 tweets had been made with the hashtag #btconf on Twitter, I had the feeling that more and more people use Instagram. Interesting also: we had less people using the wifi than ever before. Maybe also because people were following the talks more intensively. This year we had people from 24 countries in the house. Those countries, from A–Z, were: Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, Greece, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Singapore, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States. Wow. Thanks to the volunteer-team. Photo: Andreas Dantz. 14 wonderful volunteers were amongst those people. The core team is coming back for many, many years already and the names of those who helped running the event are: Alex, Andreas, Andy, Bartek, Daniela, Ewa, Jana, Jessica, Lisa, Patrick, Sven, Tom with Tanja (my lovely wife) and Guido leading the team. Absolutely fantastic to have such a stunning team. Thanks a lot! Side Events Before and After On Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th, we already and as usual for the last five years met for the IndieWebCamp in Düsseldorf. Tantek and I organised this IWC and it once more was hosted by our friends at sipgate. Indie Web Camp no. 5 in Düsseldorf at sipgate. Photo: Juliane Schütz. For the very first time our friends at Wacom hosted our Pre-Conference Warm-Up. All 200 tickets were taken and Wacom did an amazingly wonderful job of creating a friendly environment for us to meet and greet at the evening before beyond tellerrand. Wacom gave us a home and too care of us with drink, snacks and a DJ. Thank you so much! We furthermore had four sessions between the regular schedule: a Breakfast Session with Liam Griffin for Shopify, one Lunch-Time Session by Christoph Reinartz for trivago, another Lunch-Time Session with Chris Heilmann and the Working Draft Podcast for Microsoft, and an Evening-Break Session with Fabien Benetou for Mozilla. Thanks everybody for the session! Joschi Kuphal organised another Accessibility Club around beyond tellerrand. The first one in Düsseldorf and smaller than his conference in Berlin, but with around 70 attendees a well attended one with presentations and bar camp like sessions during the whole day. Photos This year Norman Posselt, Florian Ziegler, Juliane Schütz and Andreas Dantz officially took photos at the event, but other people shot some amazing photos as well. Anything I got or found so far is listed below. Florian Ziegler was part of the beyond tellerrand family again and captured the atmosphere in lovely black and white photos during the days. Juliane Schütz comes to Düsseldorf for a while now. Always known for amazing photos at the Indie Web Camp as well as beyond tellerrand, she caught this year’s edition in a mix of black and white as well as color shots. Andreas Dantz captured the show on stage and in the exhibition in this great set of photos. Long time friend and supporter with sipgate Axel Topeters created this set of lovely photos from two days in Düsseldorf. Juliane Schütz also created photo sets of day 1 and day 2 at the

Last week, the British novelist Mark Haddon wrote an essay for the Financial Times about his recent decision to take a break from Twitter. What I liked about this piece is that it unpacked a nuanced back-and-forth thought process about social media.

This is the first post about Remark, my upcoming Social Reader that is replacing my previous app, Indigenous. In my last log about Indigenous I talked about taking the lessons I’ve learned during Indigenous and structuring Remark better from the ground up.
First things first, I have multiple apps ...

AMONG THE MEGA-CORPORATIONS that surveil you, your cellphone carrier has always been one of the keenest monitors, in constant contact with the one small device you keep on you at almost every moment. A confidential Facebook document reviewed by The Intercept shows that the social network courts carriers, along with phone makers — some 100 different companies in 50 countries — by offering the use of even more surveillance data, pulled straight from your smartphone by Facebook itself.

Offered to select Facebook partners, the data includes not just technical information about Facebook members’ devices and use of Wi-Fi and cellular networks, but also their past locations, interests, and even their social groups. This data is sourced not just from the company’s main iOS and Android apps, but from Instagram and Messenger as well. The data has been used by Facebook partners to assess their standing against competitors, including customers lost to and won from them, but also for more controversial uses like racially targeted ads.

A massive database containing contact information of millions of Instagram influencers, celebrities and brand accounts has been found online. The database, hosted by Amazon Web Services, was left exposed and without a password allowing anyone to look inside. At the time of writing, the database had…

QUINCY, MA—Confirming that they have no intention of modifying the traditional uniform of their profession at any point in the foreseeable future, mathematics professors from across the country joined their voices Monday to reaffirm their commitment to wearing chinos with running shoes. “We believe that this singular look has really been working for us for the past few decades, allowing as always for slight variations such as the presence or absence of pleats and the availability of slightly different varieties of white Reebok footwear, and we have decided to formally recommit to this outfit for as long as our profession continues to exist,” said Boston University vector analysis professor Paul Slavish, explaining that the pairing of khakis with cross trainers had become the symbol of his profession, as it offered a perfect combination of professionalism, approachability, and the comfort vital for on-campus life. “We acknowledge that our sneakers, while technically advanced, will never be used for actual running; our pants, while relatively clean, will never actually be ironed; and that this lower ensemble will always be paired with either a dress shirt two sizes too large or a sweat-wicking polo shirt that has never—and will never—wick away the sweat of exercise. Never shall we stray from this sacred combination, which proclaims at a glance that we are casual, unfussy people who happen to be very serious about mathematics. Plus, check out all these side pockets!” Slavish also confirmed that certain professors would occasionally wear a wacky necktie printed with mathematical symbols, but that this would occur at a maximum of three days per semester.

I just read an article about how many people with ADHD rely on services like Evernote to keep their tendencies to go off chasing squirrels in check long enough to be productive.
In honor of #ADHDAwarenessMonth, we asked ADHD coach @takecontroladhd how she takes control of it with Evernote. https://t...